Seeing Blue

 It's that time of year again. Up on the farm it's blueberry season and so far things are going quite well. I've only been picking for three days but I have five quarts already in the freezer, two quarts of sweetened blueberry juice concentrate in the refrigerator along with a quart of fresh berries and a quart of pulp from making the juice and that doesn't include the quart of concentrate I've already consumed.

A few years ago I learned that the wild blueberries that have taken over my fields have another name. I've always called them low bush blueberries. The bushes usually produce fruit two to three years after they have been cut or burned. Blueberry bushes grow on rhizomes, root networks, so mowing or burning doesn't kill the plant. It restarts it. This year has been a little different, though. This year the best berries are growing on older bushes. They grow in either small clusters or single berries which makes it pretty much impossible to pick with a blueberry rake. I wait until most of the berries on the bushes are ripe, then I clip the bush, bring it home in plastic bins, and sit on my front porch picking pretty much every ripe berry on the bush. I've been harvesting my blueberries this same way for years and I can't imagine doing it any other way.

Anyway, seeing blue...

I've noticed in years past that during blueberry season every time I close my eyes I see blueberries on the bush, visions of perfectly shaped bright blue berries against the green leaves, the sight I see for hours on end when I am picking. I wonder if it's a genetic thing, a deep memory from the past fed by the nutritional boost blueberries give me and have given generations of farmers before me. This year the visions began the day I started picking.

Oh and are they actual real Maine blueberries?

I'll let the U of M Cooperative Extension explain:

Cooperative Extension: Maine Wild Blueberries

From that I'd say mine are mostly sourtop blueberries although it's reasonable to assume there may be other varieties mixed in.

When I pick I've noticed myself gently rolling the berries with my fingers to twist them off their stem rather than gripping and pulling the berries off. The ripe berries fall right off into the bowl undamaged when I use this approach. Under-ripe berries don't let go of their stems and over-ripe ones won't even roll between my fingers solving those two problems before the berries even hit the bowl. After each batch I use a fan to winnow them, then I sit at the kitchen table and pick through the bowl a small handful at a time separating out any green ones and any soft over-ripe ones. It's a lot of work!

I have competition in my fields though. Sometimes bears get into them but more often wild turkeys devastate the crop. Some years, though, it's the people who tend to just help themselves to wild berries wherever they find them. That seems to be a Maine thing. Some of those folks occasionally are kind enough to drop off a pie for my reward for allowing wild blueberries - and them - in my fields.